


I will find my way to you

by SophieRomanoff97



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Abuse, Aftermath of Torture, Aftermath of Violence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Awesome Maria Hill, Awesome Natasha Romanov, BAMF Maria Hill, BAMF Natasha Romanov, Blood, Blood and Gore, Blood and Injury, Blood and Torture, Blood and Violence, Canon-Typical Violence, Caretaking, Character Death, Child Abuse, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Crying, Dissociation, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Maria Hill/Natasha Romanov, F/F, Human Trafficking, Hurt Natasha Romanov, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, Lesbian Character, Lesbian Maria Hill, Love, Maria Hill Feels, Maria Hill is a Good Bro, Maria Hill-centric, Medical Experimentation, Medical Procedures, Medical Trauma, Natasha Romanov Feels, Natasha Romanov Has Issues, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro, Natasha Romanov Needs a Hug, Natasha Romanov-centric, POV Maria Hill, POV Natasha Romanov, Past Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Avengers (2012), Protective Natasha Romanov, Psychological Torture, Rape/Non-con Elements, Red Room (Marvel), SHIELD, SHIELD Academy, SHIELD Family, SHIELD Wives, Torture, Triggers, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:28:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23930848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SophieRomanoff97/pseuds/SophieRomanoff97
Summary: 'There was blood everywhere, on every surface in the room. It congealed on her body, drying in every small wrinkle of her hands, every little dip in her skin, it found it’s way there. It stuck in her hair, matting the strands until she couldn’t tell where the red hair began and the red blood ended. She left sticky, smeared footprints in her wake, fresh blood dripping from her body, only adding to the pools of it already staining the floor.It was everywhere, touching everything, spilling down her throat, choking her lungs, covering her eyes and ears and-“Natasha?”A voice filtered in through the dark, familiar, like honey, warm and comforting.'When a mission goes awry and Natasha retreats into her head, it's up to Maria to piece together what happened and help her girlfriend come back to her.
Relationships: Maria Hill/Natasha Romanov
Comments: 5
Kudos: 151
Collections: Assassin Twins + Tony





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> it's your local angsty gay back with another doozy for you all
> 
> trigger warnings are all in the tags so please read them first and click off if you need to, no worries i promise!
> 
> This is pre-Avengers but that's all I know. I might make a series outta my BlackHill fics and then I'll have a cleaner timeline lmao but they're both living at the academy still and aren't married yet so like 2007-ish? idk guys just go with me
> 
> I love me some Blackhill, even though Infinity War and Endgame ruined literally everything, but in fanfic land that never happened and never does happen :) :) :)
> 
> also this is pretty much how dissociation can go for me so it might seem fragmented and opposing and strange but it be like that sometimes
> 
> I love them and I love angst so here we go! Enjoy <3

_There was blood everywhere, on every surface in the room. It congealed on her body, drying in every small wrinkle of her hands, every little dip in her skin, it found it’s way there. It stuck in her hair, matting the strands until she couldn’t tell where the red hair began and the red blood ended. She left sticky, smeared footprints in her wake, fresh blood dripping from her body, only adding to the pools of it already staining the floor._

_It was everywhere, touching everything, spilling down her throat, choking her lungs, covering her eyes and ears and-_

“Natasha?”

A voice filtered in through the dark, familiar, like honey, warm and comforting.

“Nat?” 

The voice asked again, more insistent, louder, softer.

Natasha opened her eyes.

The room was bright, her eyes hurt at the intensity of it. Everything around her was shrouded in light, too intense and too blurry, too strong, too weak, too much and too little.

Wincing, Natasha pressed a hand to her eyes for a moment, exhaling a shaky breath that she’d clearly been holding in for far longer than she’d thought. A soft touch ghosted over her shoulder and down her back, tucking a flyaway strand of hair behind her ear. 

The redhead shivered lightly, teeth biting into the soft flesh of her lower lip, threatening to draw blood if she pressed any harder. She slowly lowered her hand from over her eyes, casting a cautious glance around at her surroundings.

Debrief office 3, Agent’s Coulson and Hill on site, as well as herself. One door in and out, one bullet proof window overlooking the city, five cameras dotted around the room. Blood on the floor and-

_Blood on the floor._

“Natasha, baby, hey-“ The soft honeyed voice had gone from beside her to in front of her. Natasha hadn’t even realized she’d stood up until Maria was in her eye line, one hand held up in surrender, a show of passiveness, the other held out towards the redhead’s left hand, but not touching. 

“Maria?” Natasha asked roughly, brows pulling together in confusion, eyes straying again to the spot of blood on the carpet.

She vaguely remembered sitting down in her seat at the table, brushing a hand over her nose and watching as she wiped blood from her face onto her hand, where it then found purchase embedded in the blue carpet beneath her feet. But anything else after that until that moment, and probably not even then, was hazy or full on blank and not in her mind at all.

Coulson had probably been talking, he was debriefing them after their mission after all, but she recalled none of what had been said or if she had said anything back.

_Professional, Romanoff, way to go._

If she even was Romanoff, the lines in her head were fuzzy and trying to figure out the pieces felt like treading through cement.

“It’s me.” Maria nodded, offering a careful smile. “You’re okay, we’re just in the office. Phil was going through our mission but I think we’ll get you back to our room, huh?” 

Natasha forced her eyes away from the blood spot, looking at her superior, still in his seat. She could tell he had been sitting and not helping only so he didn’t make anything worse and not through not giving a shit. 

“You’re dismissed, Natasha, it’s okay. We’ll pick up when you feel better.” Coulson nodded at the women.

Feel better from what? What was even happening? Sure, she’d been bleeding but if it had been bad then she would be in medical, and she wasn’t, so that meant she wasn’t really hurt at all.

“I am…better.” The woman’s frown grew and her gaze moved to Maria, her eyes cloudy and lost. 

“I know.” The black haired agent took a small step forward. “But we’re dismissed, so let’s go.” She hadn’t once dropped her hand back to her side, it was still held out to Natasha.

Out of more confusion than comfort, Natasha slipped her hand into Maria’s. She let herself be led out of the room, her steps stumbling and stuttering in a way that usually indicated severe injury or overdrinking. Come to think of it, she did feel kind of drunk. Was she drunk? Surely not, they’d been on mission.

They were back in their room when Natasha next came to awareness. 

Maria was still holding onto her and seemed even more like Natasha was being pulled along more than she was willing her body to actually move. The agent kicked her shoes off the moment the door shut behind them and Natasha found that her body was finding that movement far too much to even attempt it.

Natasha numbly stepped more into their room, sunlight glinting off something to her right capturing her attention. The redhead stepped in front of the full length mirror, peering at a reflection that she only vaguely recognised as her own.

She felt like she was another plane of existence, another planet even, with everything a little off and disorientating. The figure in the mirror looked exhausted. There were dark bruises under her eyes and her eyelashes fluttered against pale skin. The figure had been bleeding, a line of now dry blood making the distance from her nose to her top lip. There were flecks of blood in the woman’s hair, on her knuckles, smeared behind her ear. The blood was clearly not her own and had clearly been scrubbed at quickly and dismissively, leaving multiple traces of it everywhere.

The figure was shaking. Finely, almost unperceptively, but the vibrating energy could be seen nonetheless. She was dressed haphazardly, in clothes that didn’t belong to the woman. The shirt too big, the logo faded from use. The pants she had on were also too big and a little too long and the dipped a little too low on her hips. Even the shoes seemed too big and clunky for the woman’s size.

“Babe-“ The hand from earlier rested on the redhead’s shoulder and Natasha slowly pulled her eyes from the mirror. 

“Hmm?” She replied dazedly, blinking spots away from her vision. 

“Let’s lay down.” Maria said softly, already turning the other woman away from the mirror and towards the bed, covers already pulled back and ready for Natasha to climb in.

The redhead had already begun to lay down when Maria realised she still had Phil’s shoes on her feet. It wasn’t like Natasha to keep missing details like that and the brunette desperately hoped that a nap would help.

Maria quickly unlaced the shoes and threw them towards the hallway, pulling the covers up over her love. Before they left for missions, the pair always made sure to change the bed covers and stock up the fridge in their room with snacks and drinks. There was nothing worse than coming home after a long mission to a dirty bed and no food to eat.

Pulling the soft white covers up to Natasha’s chin, Maria sat on the side of the bed, stroking a hand over the woman’s hair and brushing fingers over her forehead, running a finger up and down from her hairline to the bridge of her nose. “Sleep, love.” The agent said softly, watching as Natasha’s eyelids fluttered shut. “I’ve got you.”

It took no time at all for Natasha to fall asleep, which didn’t surprise Maria in the slightest. The woman had barely been hanging onto consciousness the entire ride home, through medical and a hasty clean up and then through the parts of debrief they’d half managed to get through. 

Maria had tried to get the redhead to sleep as they headed home but she had stubbornly refused, citing a whole bunch of reasons that didn’t entirely make sense, so she didn’t have to admit that the only reason she wouldn’t sleep was the fear settled deep in her bones. The panic, the pain of everything that had happened, the idea that if she closed her eyes the horrors would never stop.

But during debrief Natasha tipped over the line of exhausted to whatever the hell came next. She suffered with dissociation at the best of times but it had been so bad that Natasha had just stopped talking, stopped reacting, stopped moving. She hadn’t seemed to see them, hear them, feel when Maria touched her.

She had been gazing at the corner of the room for ten minutes, slack and completely gone, before Maria had told Phil, in no uncertain terms, that they were done and leaving. To his credit, Phil had looked ready to pull the plug the minute Natasha stilled completely.

Watching Natasha sleep, Maria began to feel the panic and horror settling in around her. She’d fought to push it back, look after her girlfriend, deal with physical wounds, just get through debrief. Now that she was completely alone with her thoughts, the images wouldn’t stop assaulting her brain.

They’d only been separated for an hour at most, and Maria had literally no fucking idea what the hell had happened to Natasha from the moment Maria had been knocked out, to finding her girlfriend. Of course, she’d seen the room the redhead had been in, had seen the carnage and chaos around her, had seen the people, the instruments, the beds, the bodies, but Natasha hadn’t been able to even give her a hint about what had happened since she’d been gone.

Teeth gritting, body covered in goosebumps, Maria slid from the bed to sit on the floor, knees coming up to her chest, hands covering her eyes. “Fuck.” She whispered, feeling the telltale signs of tears well up behind her eyes. Was Natasha ever going to get over what had happened to her, what had happened to everyone around her?

“Fuck.” Maria whispered again, pressing her hands so hard to her eyes she saw stars. Despite her best efforts, tears began to drop steadily down her cheeks until the agent was sobbing, cursing with each breath.

Now what?


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey hi! I hope you like this chapter :)
> 
> TW's for violence, nightmares, and panic attacks <3

_Maria was on the floor. Her eyes were shut and blood collected at her temple, making a line down her cheek and onto the dusty floor beneath her head. Natasha growled at the man who had dared touch her girlfriend, stalking towards and taking actual pleasure in bringing him to the floor, thighs around his neck until he stopped moving. Maybe a little longer after that too._

_It was hard to think, what with the alarms blaring non-stop, with red flashing lights circulating around the room, with the heavy footsteps of multiple assailants running down the hall towards the room Natasha was in._

_Cursing under her breath, Natasha tugged her belt from around her waist, running to the double doors that were already shaking the men were so close. She looped the belt through the handles, making a bunch of knots until it seemed like it would hold._

_Sure it would hold for what…another twenty extra seconds? That was fine, Natasha was prepared for the fight. But first she needed to take care of something. Or rather, someone._

_Doubling back, the redhead dropped to her knees beside Maria, first measuring her pulse-strong and steady, before trying to rouse her. Natasha hadn’t really been expecting it to work and by then, the attackers were already at the doors. Out of time, she jumped up to her feet, grabbed Maria under the armpits and pulled her over to the collection of shipping containers in the room._

_Getting the agent into one was by no means easy. Maria sure as hell wasn’t heavy, but the boxes were tall and she had absolutely no time to be gentle about it. Her girlfriend was going to have a lot of bruises, that was for sure._

_“Shit, sorry.” Natasha murmured as Maria’s foot got caught on the outside of the box and the woman struggled to get it free. The sounds from the doors were louder and it was only a matter of seconds before they were swarming the place._

_Natasha rather unceremoniously dropped the rest of her partner into the box, tugging the wooden lid over the top. The containers already had air holes in, so she wasn’t worried about the other woman suffocating or anything but she sure hoped Maria was up to date on her tetanus shots because the inside of the box was dirty with blood and god knows what else._

_Then the doors were smashing open and Natasha was surrounded. Knowing the man spark out on the floor wouldn’t be up to telling the men what had happened and also knowing that no one else had seen Maria in that room, the redhead knew what she had to do to keep her partner safe._

_The group moved towards her until she was at the centre of a very unpleasant friendship circle. The inner circle advanced and Natasha attacked. In between hits and kicks and knives being wielded dangerously close to her face, she made sure to ask, very loudly, where the hell they had taken Maria._

_Act as if she hadn’t seen her girlfriend for a while and they were unlikely to check the very room they were in, Natasha knew the big burly guards she often encountered on missions liked to cut corners._

_Growling, Natasha brought a particularly heavy handed man to the floor, slamming a fist down into his face before sliding a dropped knife to his jugular. “Where is she?” She hissed, drawing blood, tip of the knife more than ready to finish its movement._

_“You’ll never get her back.” The man spat. That was perfect, honestly, they now were all but convinced their side had Maria which was exactly what Natasha had needed._

_“Oh don’t worry, I’m definitely getting her back.” The woman grinned, swaying to the side to avoid a blow from another remaining guard. “And when I do, I’m going to come back and you’re going to wish you’d told me.” Instead of cutting across his throat, she drove the knife down into his shoulder and flipped up to her feet._

_There were virtually no men left standing when Natasha looked around the room to survey her work. The one who had tried to hit at her as she’d threatened the guy on the floor, was already bleeding and it took nothing at all to drop him too._

_Then Natasha had to decide whether to fetch Maria or whether she should finish the mission and then come back for her partner. Unfortunately, it soon became very clear that she wasn’t going to have the luxury of choosing from her own options. The spy was moving towards another fallen knife, bending over to grab the hilt when something sharp impaled itself in the soft flesh beneath her jaw._

_Immediately knowing that the object was a tranq dart, Natasha quickly pulled the needle from her skin, dropping it to the ground. She was already getting dizzy, vision blurring as she half stumbled towards the door where a hazy figure stood waiting._

_Natasha didn’t even make it to the door, crashing to her knees halfway there, heartbeat pounding in her temples. “Fuck-“ She mumbled as darkness crept up the corners of her vision._

_Please let Maria be safe, please let Maria be safe, Please let-_

_Natasha slumped forward against the cold and blood stained floor as the black took ahold of her._

_When she woke up, she was in hell._

…

Natasha was dreaming. Though that was too nice of a word to ever describe what was actually happening because it sure as shit wasn’t a nice, or even normal dream.

Natasha had started off tossing and turning, managing to jostle Maria where she still sat on the floor, back against the bed. The dark haired woman had been zoning out, compiling all the information they knew about the mission, cataloguing everything from the very beginning, before she’d gotten knocked out, before they’d even landed in Berlin.

Maria didn’t jump, but she startled for sure. Momentarily confused, she twisted to see if Natasha had woken up and the nudging had been her girlfriend trying to get her attention. 

“Ah, shit.” Maria murmured, getting up to her feet, rubbing at her temple.

The frantic tossing and turning would have been bad enough on its own but then Natasha let out a sharp, strangled yelp, her fingers clutching so tightly around the covers that she threatened to rip it right in half. Wincing at the noise, Maria took a few steps back, heart racing a little.

Usually waking someone from a nightmare was a fairly easy process but that had never been the case for agents or spies and it had for sure never been the case for Natasha. Natasha was notoriously bad at waking and many doctors had figured that out the hard way when she was down in medical. Maria too had learned that very early on in their relationship so she had to be extremely careful.

“Nat-“ Maria tried calling for her partner first, slowly increasing the volume of her tone. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t work. There was a very brief moment where Maria considered if waking her was in any way a good idea at all but it was squashed pretty damn quickly when Natasha started talking. Again, talking wasn’t exactly the right word. Whispering, whimpering, choking out words were all more apt. It wasn’t even the tone that worried Maria the most, it was the fact that it was Russian. Natasha liked speaking her home language, especially nicknames and terms of endearment and during special moments. But Natasha dreaming in Russian never ended well.

“Fuck it all.” Maria muttered, taking another measured step back before crouching to grab something from the floor. Physically touching Natasha to wake her up was a complete no go, she could get her wrist snapped in less than a second, so she’d have to improvise.

Handily, or rather, luckily, there was a fallen throw pillow on the floor. Obviously, Maria couldn’t just go lobbing a candle or TV remote at her girlfriend and after one disastrous time where the agent had tried flicking water at Natasha, they’d learned soft was better. 

Taking a small breath, trying to drown out the Russian words Maria already knew the meaning of, the agent carefully and precisely threw the pillow towards the bed. In hindsight, Maria really should have taken the knife they kept under the pillows away first but it was a little too late for that.

Natasha started violently, muscle memory and instinct driving the confused and scared woman to grab the weapon. She looked over at Maria with eyes that weren’t even really there, quickly making her way off the bed.

“Nat-“ Maria tried as the redhead stalked towards her, backing her up against the wall. “Nat, baby, it’s just me.” The agent held her hands up to show passiveness, submissiveness, she really really _really_ did not want to have to attempt to stop an attack.

Blessedly Natasha hadn’t even touched Maria by the time her eyes began to clear. The knife trembled in the woman’s hand before sliding to the floor. Natasha followed suit, slamming to her knees as she tried to pull in a shuddering, desperate breath.

Maria got down in front of the woman quickly, reaching a hand out and resting it on Natasha’s knee. “Sweetheart hey, look at me-“ She murmured, ducking her head to try and get into her partner’s eyeline. 

Natasha flinched, fingers clenching and unclenching at her side. Her breathing was getting faster and more ragged and her skin had paled quickly. She refused to look up from what must have been a very interesting spot on the floor, even as she struggled to get enough air.

“Nat, look at me.” Maria wasn’t just the woman’s partner now, but her superior, the director of Shield. She moved forward until their knees were touching, one hand wrapping around one of Natasha’s trembling ones and the other hooking under the redhead’s chin to lift her face up. 

“Nice and slow, love.” Maria murmured, keeping her own breathing even and regular. “Let’s count like we practiced okay? In and out, as slow as you can.” She smiled reassuringly, counting out loud for Natasha, who tried to slow her breathing and follow the instructions and numbers. 

“We’ve got this, Nat.” Maria squeezed Natasha’s fingers, coaxing her girlfriend gently but firmly through the hyperventilation stage of the attack. “We’ve got this.”

But then begged the question did they really have it? Or were things going to get even worse?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for stopping by! Lemme know what you think :)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys. thanks for stopping by!
> 
> TW's for medical trauma, experimentation, human trafficking, blood and injuries, past abuse (red room sucks)
> 
> sorry it took so long <3

After Natasha had gotten her breathing more under control, the brunette very carefully helped her stand, shuffling more than walking back over to the bed, where the redhead sat down immediately. She was right on the very edge, but still managed to draw her knees up to her chest, knuckles white as she gripped onto them. A classic Natasha pose, she’d never been able to bring her knees up to her chest at The Red Room, their wrists had been chained and if they were disobedient, their ankles too. If they weren’t, they were too covered in wounds or too weak to do more than lay there flat on the mattress. 

So now, when she was feeling upset or overwhelmed, she’d curl up as small as she could, clinging to her legs and folding in on herself, just trying to feel an ounce better. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. The jury was still out on this particular time.

“Nat?” Maria asked quietly, sitting as close to the edge as her girlfriend was, close enough that they were almost touching but not too close that she was invaded the personal space of an already panicked person. “Do you want to talk about what happened?” 

Natasha flinched, her nails digging into her knees. She took a shaky breath and bit into her lower lip. 

Maria could piece things together of their mission fairly well, she and Phil had a pretty concrete idea of what had happened. She had seen the blood and the dead agents and the beds, and had seen what was on the beds. Girls, women, tied down, needles in all of them, bandages and bandaids and stitches littering half naked bodies. Maria had also been fighting long enough in the room she’d been knocked out in to see the crates and wooden boxes stacked up along the entirety of one side. 

They had been unnerving enough but even more unnerving was waking up inside one of them. It had been too dark to see much, but what the agent had been able to see was more than enough. Not only was the inside of the box covered in blood and different coloured strands of hair, the lid sealing her in had perfectly cut circles in the wood, and it was easy to come to the conclusion that they were air holes. And that made it easier to come to the next disturbing conclusion; that the crates were used to ship people, to carry people, to hold people.

The girls on the beds that Maria had seen had clearly come from those boxes. Not originally, of course, they had been taken from god knows where and packed onto trucks to transport them to the base. They’d been trafficked. Going in, Natasha and Maria had known that was a possibility. The intel hadn’t been complete, but Shield thought they had enough information to send to two agents in.

Girls gone missing, tracked to that location. So yes, they’d known the likelihood of finding some of those missing girls was high, but they, or certainly Maria hadn’t, imagined the lengths of what they would find. They’d done many human-trafficking missions, nearly all of them had been to do with underground sex rings, black market video stores, ‘prostitutes’ for the rich and powerful.

That had been what Maria had been anticipating, and she had been wrong. Sure, maybe the girls would eventually be used in that way, but at the moment the two agents got there, something else was going on instead.

Now Maria was still waiting for the tech team to contact her, to let her know what had been found on the recordings and cameras but without that information, and without her being in the hospital room during the process, she was at a loss. Yes, it had something to do with experimentation, yes it had something to do with surgery, yes it had something to do with drugs, but to what end? She didn’t know.

The agent had the suspicion that Natasha did know. Did know what was being done and why, did know what the surgeries were for, did know what the drugs were for, and that was why she had decimated the place. 

Natasha hadn’t just killed the guards, doctors, agents. She’d torn the room apart. The IV machines were thrown across the room, pools of drugs from the bags lining the floor. Every needle was out of the girl’s arms by the time Maria had gotten there. The cupboards of medical equipment were fallen, trampled on, smashed across the walls. The leather bindings holding the women to their beds weren’t just undone but were ripped apart.

And in the middle of the chaos, was Natasha. 

She’d been cradling a woman…girl, probably, to her chest, rocking the both of them on the blood-stained floor. The girl had been unconscious, bloody, pale and obviously dying. Natasha had growled as Maria approached them, dropping to her knees. Natasha had been primally instinctive, curling her body around the girl’s, protecting her. 

Neither Natasha or Maria knew whether the girl was alive. All of the women had been rolled onto a different jet to head straight to the hospital, and the two agents had been left to wait for their own extraction. 

Natasha had shut down long before Maria had even woken up in that box, hadn’t spoken about any of it. Phil was missing vital pieces of information, but even he knew to leave well enough alone for the time being. Reports could wait until the tech team find out the information.

Maria waited to hear Natasha’s answer, not sure if one was even coming as more seconds passed by. “Nat?” She asked softly. “You don’t have to talk, love, I just want to know what I can do.”

The redhead swallowed and shuddered, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment. “I…I want to talk about it, I just…” She sighed deeply, rubbing her hands over her eyes. “It was like our experiments, Ria, it was like…”

And then Maria understood, cursing herself into oblivion for not realizing sooner. When Natasha said ‘our experiments’, she didn’t mean anything the two agents had been through before. She meant ‘our’ in a completely different way. She meant her experiments, her and all the girls in The Red Room. Those experiments.

Maria couldn’t stop herself anymore. She turned to Natasha and immediately wrapped her in her arms. The redhead didn’t struggle, just fell into the touch until she was half across the older agent’s lap, face hidden against her shoulders, fingers curling into Maria’s shirt. “Nat.” She whispered, chin resting against Natasha’s head.

What else could she say? What else could she possibly do to make any of it better? There was no point of an empty promise, no use in saying it would be okay, that it would never happen again because it wasn’t okay, and it would happen again. 

Natasha wasn’t crying, not that her girlfriend could tell, but she was shaking like a leaf, clinging to Maria like she was about to be pulled away. 

No empty promises, no half assed reassurances, no lying. 

“You’re not there anymore, love.” Maria whispered, rocking the pair of them gently. “We, you, stopped the people there. The girls are at the hospital, waiting for their families, safe and alive because of you. Those responsible are dead, and we are not.”

“What if-“

Maria already knew what those mumbled words out of her girlfriend’s mouth would ask.

“If anybody responsible for this is still out there, we stop them. If this is part of something bigger, we stop them. If there are other locations, we stop them. We hunt them down, we kill them, leave them to rot, and we save every single fucking girl out there.” Maria was almost surprised at the violent tone she’d taken on. 

Natasha didn’t seem to be, she just nodded fervently and clung tighter, exhaling a shaky breath against Maria’s neck. “We stop them.” She said quietly, though her voice was louder and more insistent than before. “We stop them.” She repeated again, slowly pulling her face back to look up at the other agent. “Right?”

“Damn right.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lemme know if you liked it :) it won't be much longer as I'm focusing on the angst more than the outcome of their mission etc <3


End file.
